So I guess this is growing up

I don’t know what happened between being a child and becoming an adult but life has not turned out as I expected. Here I am in the center of my 30th decade and I still feel like a child. I often pause and wonder if this is normal, did I screw up somewhere and lock myself in perpetual childhood?

If you were to walk into my comically messy office, you’d pass 2 Nerf guns, an aluminum case containing 2 remote control helicopters, a remote control car, and a few World of Warcraft themed Megabloks sets on display. All things I associate with childhood and definitely not something my younger self would have expected a 35 year old man to own.

Did I always have the definition of maturity wrong?

I grew up expecting to become boring one day. I didn’t know when but it was a guarantee as far as I was concerned. There would come a time where I’d switch from an immature kid to a super serious adult who woke up early, rushed off to a job, then came home to eat dinner and fall asleep, destined to repeat the day forever. Sure, work exists and my days aren’t all that different but I never expected to still be playing with toys.

I’m not complaining, I love this life. I’m a guy who by some accounts is approaching the middle of his life and I’ve recently discovered the joy of remote control vehicles. I’m married, own a house, and have all sorts of disposable income thanks to the joint decision of my wife and I not to reproduce. Of course, even if we did chose to crank out a reproduction of ourselves, our friends with kids still seem like big children raising little children.

I watch something like Jerry Seinfeld’s “Comedians in cars getting coffee” and I realize that the whole growing up thing is a sham. Here are grown men acting young, breaking only for the occasions where life requires them to act like “grown ups” and then jumping back into the swimming pool of childhood, hoping not to be interrupted again.

I’m so relieved life isn’t what I expected, I didn’t want to be a serious person and I don’t have to be. If one day I see the ripe age of 70 and I’m lucky enough to have my beautiful wife by my side and we’re still laughing when one of us farts, I’ll be so amazingly blessed.

Who wants to be a serious grown up anyway? Plus farts are always funny.